ANNOUNCE: Exscript 0.9.8

[Samuel]

Introduction
-------------
Exscript is a scripting language for automating Telnet or SSH sessions. 
It supports a wide range of features, such as parallelization, AAA 
authentication methods, TACACS, and a very simple template language. 
Python developers can easily extend Exscript templates using standard 
Python modules.

This release comes with many new features, and the documentation was also 
greatly improved. Please refer to the project page for documentation.

Release 0.9.8 is now feature complete and expected to be the last release 
before 1.0 stable.

New since Exscript 0.9
-----------------------
* Full support for SSH was added.
* Greatly improved the prompt detection. This should now work by default 
with Unix, IOS, JunOS and many more.
* Support for assigning variables in the Exscript template.
* URL-style hostnames are now supported.
* The exscript interpreter now checks regular expressions for correctness 
at compiled time, not only at runtime.
* The "loop" statement now supports iterating over multiple lists in one 
run.
* A deadlock when using TACACS authentication was fixed.
* Character noise from telnet control characters is now properly filtered.
* Exscript no longer deadlocks if an error occurs while writing to a 
logfile.
* Performance was improved when many hosts are loaded from a text file.

Dependencies
-------------
Python 2.2 or better
Python Crypto module
Python pexpect module
For SSH support, the "ssh" command line utility (OpenSSH).

Download Exscript
------------------
Release: http://exscript.googlecode.com/files/exscript-0.9.8.tgz
SVN instructions: http://code.google.com/p/exscript/source

Links
------
Exscript project page: http://code.google.com/p/exscript/
Mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/exscript
Bug tracker: http://code.google.com/p/exscript/issues/list
Browse the source: http://exscript.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/